A modified incidental-teaching procedure for autistic youth: acquisition and generalization of receptive object labels.

Abstract

A modified incidental-teaching procedure was used to increase the receptive language skills of autistic youth who had previously experienced lengthy institutionalization. At the time of the study, the two severely language-delayed children had recently been transitioned to a community-based group home. Receptive-labeling skills were taught for four sets of objects typically used in school lunch preparation. The percentage of correct, unprompted object identifications displayed by Youth 1 increased when the incidental-teaching package (gestural prompts, behavior-specific praise, and contingent access to lunch-making supplies) was sequentially introduced in a multiple-baseline design across sets of objects. These results were replicated with Youth 2. The youths' newly acquired language skills also generalized to a different setting (the dining room of the group home) and to a different activity occurring later in the day (a traditional sit-down, discrete-trial session). This research indicates that the linguistic skills of severely developmentally delayed autistic children can be accelerated by incidental instruction that is provided in the course of shaping other home-living skills.